5 Minutes with Cam Levins

There are a couple of reasons you’ve never heard of Southern Utah’s Cameron Levins before the 2011 NCAA cross country season. One might be that he’s Canadian. Yep, the only sub-4:00 miler in SUU’s history (3:59.80, set in the 2010 indoor season) hails from Black Creek, B.C., a small Vancouver Island town that Levins explains by referencing it to the bigger towns it’s closer to. Another reason might be that, though Levins was the runner-up to BYU’s Miles Batty at the Nov. 12 Mountain region XC championships in Provo, Utah, he’s never actually been to the NCAA cross country championships.

But Levins has his C.V. packed with accomplishments outside of the collegiate system. During his 2010-11 redshirt year, Levins first won the ASGI Canadian Cross Country Championships last November. Then he was the runner-up to the U.S.’s Robert Cheseret at the NACAC Cross Country Championships on Feb. 19. And on March 21, in Punta Umbria, Spain, Levins was the top Canadian at World Cross Country Championships, finishing 57th.

All that time away from his home at Southern Utah has changed him, Levins says. It’s been obvious this season, as he won four different meets in the month of October alone, including the Summit League Championship, the Chile Pepper Festival, the Bill Dellinger Invitational and at the Color Country Invitational. If anyone can stop University of Arizona’s Lawi Lalang on Nov. 21 in Terra Haute, Ind., the man with arguably the greater high-level racing experience isn’t a bad bet.

Running Times: What were your early years like, growing up in Canada?

Cameron Levins: Well, I lived in a small community. I had a couple towns right outside of me, maybe 30-, 40,000 people. I went to school there — a half-an-hour drive. Where I live, there are maybe 2,000 people.

RT: What was the running community like?

CL: Well, when I was growing up, through elementary school, our school started cross country in second grade, and then track in third grade — not like we were training or anything, but they’d let us compete in races. But we had, I’d say, a more organized track club started in seventh grade, at least for me. There weren’t a lot of distance runners around the area, but lots of older runners to run with. So it wasn’t too bad, but not a super popular area to do it.

RT: How were your parents about your sport?

CL: Well, they weren’t really into it — well, they were always supportive of me, don’t get me wrong. I think they got into it the same time as my brother and me did. They always supported it; they still continue to.

RT: How did you wind up at Southern Utah?

CL: Well, I always wanted to get into the NCAA system, and be able to compete in a DI program. We put a profile onto this website called beRecruted.com, and coaches can go onto it and search through athletes’ profiles. Southern Utah University, [head coach] Eric Houle, he found my profile, he bookmarked it, and it allowed me to see what universities looked over my profile, and I was able to send a letter out to them from there. So we got in into contact from there, and moved along. I really liked the university and program. And they offered me enough to be able to be able to go down to the U.S.

RT: What do you think attracted Coach Houle to you?

CL: Honestly, I don’t really know. I had pretty good times across the board — I wasn’t really special. I think one of the big things he was looking for was an international athlete that would be able to stay there all four years, because in Utah, he deals with athletes coming in their freshman year, leaving on a two-year (Mormon) mission, and then coming back, and he wanted a consistent runner to stay in there. So I wasn’t a lot better than the recruits he may have been able to get out of Utah, but I think it was just the idea that I would be able to be there the entire time.

Once I got there, I just started to continue to develop and improve quite a bit. I came from such a small area with no one to train with, that I just started improving leaps and bounds.

RT: So you’d credit a training group for how you’ve improved?

CL: Yeah, Definitely. There were certainly some key athletes when I came in there that I looked up to — you know, tried to chase down in workouts all the time. They definitely helped me that way.

RT: Were there other international athletes on the team at the time?

CL: There wasn’t when I first started. We got another Canadian named Nigel Sharp [currently a junior, with a 4:17.24 mile best]. He came in the year after me. I think we’re the only ones technically out of state. We have a guy named Elijah Rono [also a junior] who’s from Kenya originally, but he went through the Utah high school system. Us three are the international athletes on the cross country team.

RT: Do your teammates ever give you s#%@ for your accent?

CL: Oh yeah [laughs]. They rail me a little bit. But we kid each other about different things — yeah, of course.

RT: Do you ever fire back and make fun of American culture?

CL: I tried, but for them, it’s all normal, and so they don’t really understand exactly what I’m trying to make fun of. So it doesn’t work quite as well as I’d like [laughs].

RT: How was your training over the summer, going into your senior year?

CL: I generally go back to Canada each summer, and I try to build up a good base each year. Each year I try and change something in my training I’m looking to improve. I feel like if you’re doing the same stuff each year, you might as well be expecting the same results each year, so whether it’s more mileage or hard workouts or faster paces on your easy runs, just something. I feel like you have to try and change something in order to improve. That’s kind of a simple thing, I guess.

RT: What did you change last summer?

CL: I upped my mileage quite a bit more. At this point, I don’t feel I can do that anymore. I’ve moved up to two or three runs a day; it’s hard to put any more time into it, so I’m definitely going to be looking to go to harder workouts now.RT: You’ve had an interesting experience racing internationally. How did you convince Coach Houle to go for it?

CL: I feel like he recognizes how much of a help getting into big races like that can be for an athlete like me. I mean, when I go into these NCAA races now, I have faced such a high level of competition that I’m not intimidated. I’m confident I can get up there at the front of the race and compete no matter what. I feel like if I can’t go up there and win a race, at least I can be up there and compete for a while. Maybe I’ll get out-sprinted at the end or something, but I feel like I can run with really anyone in the NCAA. It gives me that sort of confidence, and I feel like he recognized that.

Being my redshirt year, it was easy in some ways to let me go and experience these things because I didn’t have any obligations to race for the university at that time. He was great that way. He absolutely was gung-ho about me doing these things. Like, as soon as I’d won the Canadian Championships, he was all about me trying to go to NACAC and trying to qualify for the world championships. He was very good.

RT: You also won Canadian national championships this year.

CL: I went in hoping I could do it, but I knew there was a lot of good runners in Canada still. So it was very cool to have done it.

RT: There seems to be a Canadian distance running resurgence right now. What are your thoughts on it?

CL: Well, there are a lot of Canadians going through the NCAA right now, coming out of the big Canadian university systems. I feel like there are a lot of young athletes that are about to explode onto the international scene here very soon. We have Matt Hughes [2010-11 NCAA steeplechase champion from Louisville], a very good NCAA runner in the steeplechase, Sheila Reid [2010 NCAA cross country champion and leader of defending champ Villanova] —well, I guess we were talking about men’s, right? [laughs] Sheila Reid.

RT: It’s a good time to be in Canadian distance running.

CL: Oh, yeah. Simon Bairu, and all the Canadian marathoners like Reid Coolsaet, Eric Gillis, Rob Watson, Dylan Wykes; it’s just amazing how they’re doing, chasing after that Olympic standard. I’m really excited to see what Bairu does when he finally does his marathon. I don’t know whether I will move to the marathon immediately or not. These are all things I’ll wonder about. I’ll definitely be racing the guys when I graduate.

RT: Are you planning on returning to Canada after graduation?

CL: Honestly, I haven’t decided yet. I think I may stay here at least for another year to be a graduate assistant at our program here. It’s sort of a safety net in case I don’t get good enough sponsorship to go where I want, you know? I definitely have good support group here, and have enough funding to be able to keep training in a good group.

RT: What are some of the lessons you’ve learned by racing at the world level?

CL: One of the big things I really felt it did for me is I came to understand just how good the world is at running [laughs]. I came back, and it made me all the more determined to train even harder and make sure I was ready to compete against the best runners in the NCAA. A lot of those runners could do probably very well at a professional level already. It gave me a good understanding of just how hard you need to work and just how good you need to be.

And not only that, just the experience of racing against the runners, they know exactly what to do in races, it feels like. I feel like I learned a lot about how to race against these guys.

RT: NCAA Championships are coming up on Monday. What would be a satisfying way for you to go out your final year?

CL: Well, obviously I want to get up at the front and try to compete for the title, but if I can get top five or 10, I’d be thrilled, still. I mean, I’ve never even been to the NCAA championships before, and so …

RT: Really?

CL: Yeah, this is my first year. I believe I can get up there and compete for the title, but I will be happy almost no matter what, I think [laughs]. Just being there and, as long as I got out there and gave everything I could, raced as well as I can on that day.

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